Castrovinci
Member
- Location
- NJ
All,
So I have a rather interesting situation in which I wonder why I got involved, but here it goes.
There is a pole that is owned by the condo association (my customer) that is near 500KV transmission lines. The pole has been there at least 15+ years and is aluminum and houses a plastic globe at the top. I went to change the bulb/ballast as usual business and received a small shock touching the plastic globe. We stopped and reviewed the area thinking maybe the ballast was touching something and was causing it so we shut the whole panel off and tried again to eliminate any near by items. Same issue. We were getting shocked through their gloves. The pole is located a decent distance from where the power lines dip between poles. We had a HV company come out and test the pole and there is 500 volts on the pole, but only at the top. You could touch the bottom of the pole all day and nothing. I have the testing company add a ground rod at the location thinking this may help but the testing company says it won't. Anyone deal with this and have a good solution other than use HV gloves. I have to go back to the association and they are going to want some answers and not the liability of this pole. If I install a fiberglass pole, how can I assure that this won't still be a problem, since right now even touching the plastic has voltage on it. Contacting the power company seems to so far be a pass around the circle and after months of calling. Where to go with this one short of calling police and filling a report of someone getting electrocuted, which will probably get POCO to do something about it.
So I have a rather interesting situation in which I wonder why I got involved, but here it goes.
There is a pole that is owned by the condo association (my customer) that is near 500KV transmission lines. The pole has been there at least 15+ years and is aluminum and houses a plastic globe at the top. I went to change the bulb/ballast as usual business and received a small shock touching the plastic globe. We stopped and reviewed the area thinking maybe the ballast was touching something and was causing it so we shut the whole panel off and tried again to eliminate any near by items. Same issue. We were getting shocked through their gloves. The pole is located a decent distance from where the power lines dip between poles. We had a HV company come out and test the pole and there is 500 volts on the pole, but only at the top. You could touch the bottom of the pole all day and nothing. I have the testing company add a ground rod at the location thinking this may help but the testing company says it won't. Anyone deal with this and have a good solution other than use HV gloves. I have to go back to the association and they are going to want some answers and not the liability of this pole. If I install a fiberglass pole, how can I assure that this won't still be a problem, since right now even touching the plastic has voltage on it. Contacting the power company seems to so far be a pass around the circle and after months of calling. Where to go with this one short of calling police and filling a report of someone getting electrocuted, which will probably get POCO to do something about it.